Should I bee concerned?

In your climate, you should probably be running double deeps for brood. Davis is the academic heart of agriculture for California, so have you asked any local advice? I only see two boxes on your hive, and if the upper one is a super, you need to fill a second brood box first. :wink:

Please don’t use a queen “extractor”… A queen excluder is much kinder! :blush: Joking aside, whenever you put the Flow super on, you really should use a queen excluder. Even strong proponents of not using queen excluders (like Frederick Dunn) agree that you should use one with Flow frames.

Looks like minor bearding. I guess it was hot today? Like high 70s or 80s? Second brood box will help a bit with that in the first year too.

That is a hoary old chestnut (= often answered question) here, and you can check this thread for a ton of ideas:

By the way, your external feeder worries me for 2 reasons:

  1. You shouldn’t be feeding when you have a super on the hive
  2. External feeders encourage robbing. I would find an internal feeder of some sort. You can use the Forum search tool to look for in hive feeders :wink:
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